Celebrity parents of the year! Really?

In this celebrity-obsessed, technology-driven world, it seems that never a week goes by without another example of celebrity parents behaving badly, with the whole episode spreading like wildfire for all to see across the Internet on Twitter and celebrity blogs. Let’s face it, bad parenting is nothing new, but it seems to have gained a certain notoriety of late, with celebrities thinking nothing of bad-mouthing their kids, dangling them out of windows, and indulging in narcotics in their presence! For most “normal” mum’s, bad parenting is simply a case of leaving the house without their lipstick on, but for some household names it’s quite a worrying phenomenon.

The first bad parent who springs to mind is Britney Spears – who can forget the images of her driving her kid around with no seat belt on, the naked crotch pics, the hair shaving and general wild-child lifestyle, irrespective of the fact that she had two kids to look after!

Thankfully Britney seems to have done a u-turn quite literally and has turned her life around for the sake of the kids.

Another notorious example of bad celebrity parenting has to be Kate Moss – how can we forget the drinking whilst pregnant, the crazy boyfriend, the drug taking allegations and non-stop partying, they will probably have their baby sniffing nail polish. Let’s hope Kate has taken a leaf out of Britney’s book and put all of this behind her!

Two celebrity dads who should hang their heads in shame are David Hasselhoff and Alec Baldwin, both of whom highly embarrassed their respective off spring recently with decidedly un-dad like behaviour. Hasselhoff’s own daughter took a video of her shirtless dad when he was totally wasted. In the video, Hasselhoff is TRYING to eat a hamburger while his daughter tells him that he cannot drink any more alcohol! Needless to say this video did the rounds on the internet.

In Alec Baldwin’s case, he left an abusive message to his 11-year-old daughter, in which he called her a “thoughtless little pig”. In the voice message that somehow was leaked to the media, he says: “I don’t give a damn that you’re 12-years-old or 11-years-old, or that you are a child, or that your mother is a thoughtless pain in the ass who doesn’t care about what you do as far as I am concerned.” Charming!

Closer to home we also have the delightful Kerry Katona, who inflicted her drug-taking new husband Mark Croft on her two kids by ex husband Brian McFadden. Despite a debauched and narcotic fuelled lifestyle, she went on to have two more kids by Croft (and continued to smoke whilst pregnant). Tabloid allegations regarding their antics made headline news, but since then Kerry seems to have put the worst behind her and moved on with the help of Peter Andre’s management team and another divorce. Let’s hope so – for the kids’ sake!

Two more legendary but dubious parents come in the form of Michael Jackson and Ozzy Osbourne. No-one can forget the images of the late Michael Jackson dangling his baby over the balcony in a completely mis-judged PR stunt.

And as for the Osbournes – well what a bunch of mixed up, therapy-needing, drug-addicted kids did they produce!? Kelly and Jack Osbourne’s troubles have been well-documented in the media. Their other child, Aimee, seems to have avoided such intense scrutiny and, perhaps as a result, the issues that go with it. Maybe because she saw sense and refused to appear in the fly on the wall documentary “The Osbournes”, a series featuring the domestic life of the family, which became MTV’s biggest hit to date.

Perhaps this all just goes to show that money certainly can’t buy you love, happiness or good parents!